Cotton, Crabapple, and the Long Road

Lyrics

The road north was just red clay.
Cut by wagon wheels.
Washed out in April, baked hard by July.

Before the parkways, this was the spine.
From the courthouse square, you could see the cotton rows begin.
Shoulder-high in the September heat, the air thick with lint.
A slow ocean of it, all the way to the horizon,
all the way to the crossroads they called Crabapple.
A day's journey, if the mules were willing.
A whole life, measured in harvests and dust.

And the sound of the county was a slow-turning wheel.
The groan of an axle, the creak of the leather.
Seven miles of harness bells on the long road north.
Taking the cotton to the gin, bringing the corn to the mill.
This was the rhythm. This was the deal.

At the crossroads, James P. Russell’s mill.
You could hear the water wheel from a mile off,
a steady heartbeat for the whole north county.
Heard he got the burr stones shipped down from Tennessee.
The whole place smelled of damp wood and ground corn.
Farmers waited their turn, talking weather and prices,
leaning against the wooden troughs where the animals drank.
This was the center of the world, in 1884.

And the sound of the county was a slow-turning wheel.
The groan of an axle, the creak of the leather.
Seven miles of harness bells on the long road north.
Taking the cotton to the gin, bringing the corn to the mill.
This was the rhythm. This was the deal.

I read it in a tax digest from 1897.
One farm, just off this road, declared seven mules.
Four plows.
A patent cotton planter, bought secondhand from Decatur.
It doesn’t name the man who held the reins.
Doesn't name the woman who kept the garden.
Doesn't name the hands, hired for the picking season.
Their names are just smoke from the mill boiler. Lost to the air.

Just the late afternoon light on the turned red clay.
Just the jingle of the harness, heading home.
The wagons get smaller.
The dust settles down.